Take Your Mark

Daughty Arora

World Lit Honors

April Oliver

4/21/2014

Take Your Mark

“Swimmers take your mark.” The shrill noise of the buzzer echoed for a fraction of a second in the still air. Eight girls gracefully dove into the pool and began sprinting, breaking the surface of the placid water. I was one of them. This race of 50 yards was by far one of the easiest events at a swim meet, and happened to be my best. Today, only 10 seconds in, I was already dragging behind my competitors, always one stroke behind the rest. My mind was in overdrive, subconsciously calculating how fast I should be sprinting, but my muscles ached with the effort. That’s what a week of laziness does to a swimmer. All the muscles I had worked months to build had slowly diminished, along with my stamina. I was not used to this slowness, nor was I used to being behind everyone, struggling to keep up.

I had showed up to practice the week before the meet, and while Coach helped the other girls with their dives, the rest of us were supposed to do the work out, a two-hour long drill consisting of many sprints. However, I had been practicing hard the previous week, and felt that I deserved a break. I spent the whole week watching as the freshman struggled with their dives and turns and thinking about how easy it would be to beat them at the upcoming competition. While I lay in the pool relaxing my muscles, I watched the rest of my teammates swim lap after lap of the endless workout, thinking about how the upcoming meet would be a breeze for me.

“Focus, Lily. You can do this. Just 25 yards to go.” I kept motivating myself, trying to get an extra burst of energy that would get me to the front of the herd. My muscles tensed up and began stinging with the extra effort. When I should have been at the top of the flock, 2 strokes ahead of everyone, here I was struggling to bring up the rear, and we were barely halfway done with the race. Ten seconds later, I stretched my arm out and slammed it into the black touch pad. The race was over.

I broke the surface of the water, whipping my head back to take a look at my time and position. Lane 2, 36.45 seconds…. 6th place. Last place, my all time personal low. Pulling myself out of the pool, I grabbed my towel and went to check the roster to see who had beat me. Disappointment flooding through me with each step, I began walking over to the scoreboard. I scanned over the short list of competitors in my race until my eyes landed on first place. “Lane 4… 26.32 seconds….1st place….Jane Tompkins. A freshman. I had spent all of last week laughing at Jane as she “plopped” into the pool and fruitlessly attempted to swim, and I had laughed when she slowly climbed out of the pool, looking exhausted after swimming for just a few minutes. I remembered marking her off as “just another freshman” - slow, confused, and not of my level. Now, this freshman had just beat me by 10 seconds. The clocks were wrong, the touch pads were glitching, something had to be wrong. A freshman couldn’t have beat me. Especially not someone as unskilled as Jane. As I glared at the numbers, staring them down as if hoping to change them, the people around me laughed and gave each other hugs of joy as they celebrated their new achievements.

While Jane worked hard to improve her dives and swimming, I let my muscles weaken and slowly disappear. All of Jane’s hard work had finally paid off, winning her first place, and probably beating her personal record. My lack of hard work had led my crushing loss, that too by someone I could have beaten just a week ago- without even trying.

“Swimmers take your mark.” The shrill noise of the buzzer sounded once more, signaling the start of another race, another win, another loss. Sighing, I slowly trudged back to the benches, wrapping myself in the familiar comfort of my towel, blocking out all outside noises, isolating myself within the blackness. “Swimmers take your mark.” Bzzzz.

This is the lovely line of transition between my actual story and the analysis of my story. Yayyyy!

One Day Story Reflection

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, author Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the value of hard work and the benefits of hard work at the prison camps through the eyes of Shukov, the main character. Life at the prison camps is very hard and each day boils down to a competition of survival -- those with enough skill and power to obtain what they need to survive continue to live and prosper in the camp but those without these skills are left to scavenge and hope for the best. In order to live, the prisoners need food and to get food, they must work. When Shukov and his gang are assigned to build the wall of a broken power plant, Shukov immediately begins to work. Shukov works hard in order to earn himself bigger food rations, and his hard work allows him to maintain his dignity.

When Shukov arrives at the prison camps, he doesn’t know how to lay bricks perfectly. Over time however, he adapts himself to learn the skill and works to improve it. His perfection and accuracy at accomplishing and carrying out this work of bricklaying allows him to finish his side of the wall with speed and precision. When he and his gang return to the mess hall and the bread rations are distributed, “Some [get] six ounces, others eight. Shukov [gets] ten” (119). Shukov earns his reward for all his hard work when he receives more bread than his fellow prisoners. Shukov also works hard in order to maintain his dignity in the camps and refuses to scavenge and beg for food, preferring to earn it himself through hard work. He observes “Easy money doesn’t weigh anything and it doesn’t give you that good feeling you get when you really earn it. The old saying was true - what you don’t pay for honestly, you don’t get good value for” (34).  Similarly in my story, Lily realizes the benefits and the value of working hard when she loses to Jane, a freshman. In Lily’s mind, Jane is “slow, confused, and not of [her] level”, and does not appear to be someone with the potential to beat Lily. She also feels that after a week of hard work, a break will do no harm and the same results will be obtained. However, through Jane’s determination, hard work, and ultimate accomplishment at the swim meet, Lily realizes that in order to achieve, hard work is needed.